Comments On: SL Letter of the Day: You Guys Are Animals
by Dan Savagehttp://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/11/12/sl-letter-of-the-day-you-guys-are-animals
Comments On: SL Letter of the Day: You Guys Are Animals
by Dan Savageen-usCopyright 2016 The Stranger. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, The Stranger readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact The Stranger.webmaster@thestranger.com (The Stranger Webmaster)Fri, 09 Dec 2016 00:00:01 -0800Fri, 09 Dec 2016 07:30:00 -0800Foundationhttp://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
What if you adopt a dog that doesn't want to have sex with you? How many dogs do you have to bring home from the shelter before you find the one that works for you? Animal shelters are not dating services! What sort of bad behavior have you taught to the dogs you're not sexually compatible with? What if your dog tries out some of his new tricks when you take him for a walk, with a neighbor kid? May well be the sort of behavior that gets a dog euthanized, once he is out of your protection. Better make sure your dog doesn't dig under that tall fence, and that you never need the services of a dog walker or kennel!
Posted by oohlookasquirrel]]>
Thu, 15 Nov 2012 08:06:55 -0800The Stranger
Posted by niko4ever]]>
Wed, 14 Nov 2012 08:44:49 -0800The Stranger
Posted by venomlash]]>
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 10:54:14 -0800The Stranger
Canines have a "knot"--a bulb on the penis--that ties the male and female together during ejaculation. The tie can last for up to half an hour. It's why it's dangerous to try to separate mating dogs, because you could seriously injure them.

I have no idea how that would affect dog-on-man bestiality. If it were physically possible for the same thing to happen with a human, I shudder to imagine the kind of damage that could result. A human anus is very different from a canine's vagina, obviously.
Posted by Zuulabelle]]>
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 09:40:30 -0800The Stranger
Because what a zoophile does is *teach the dog that this is acceptable behavior with humans*.

You can't be 100% sure that the dog won't ever encounter the wrong person -- for instance, what if something happens to you, and the dog gets adopted out?

A human with inappropriate sexual desires has many options -- suppress them entirely, get therapy, get a partner who's willing to roleplay, become a criminal. A dog with inappropriate sexual desires *will* act on them, and be killed for it.
Posted by Danny in Canada]]>
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 07:57:52 -0800The Stranger
And we use that argument consistently in all situations where children could be exposed to harm. For instance, we don't let the military recruit children, because joining the military is reasonably likely to be harmful whether the individual can consent or not. Conversely, we don't worry too much about whether children consent in situations that we expect to be beneficial to the child: for example, we don't ask kids for their consent before sending them to school. We don't say that school is harmful because the children can't give informed consent, even though we legally force children to go to school without asking whether they consent or not, precisely because we don't think that they can give informed consent, and we think that school is good for them whether they realize it or not, so tough shit if they don't like it.

So the claim that "they can't give informed consent, therefore it's harmful" isn't logically valid. If it was, school would be harmful. Instead, if you can show something is harmful, and if you can also show that the people being subjected to that harmful something can't reasonably consent, that's doubly bad. But you have to establish the "harmful" part independently of the "can't give informed consent" part.

By contrast, we treat animals as chattel slaves in every situation but one, and we routinely force great harm on food animals in particular without worrying about their consent at all. But somebody does something with a dog that causes people to go "squick" but doesn't cause any visible harm to the dog, and all of a sudden people start claiming to care about whether the chattel slave gives consent.

BTW, legal "consent" is a social construct, like gender. Its definition is constantly changing. It doesn't necessarily, and shouldn't necessarily, have anything to do with whether or not someone or something can give consent in reality. Legally treating minors as if they can't give consent has as much to do with the difficulties of establishing, in a court of law, whether the minor gave consent or not, as it does with whether the minor could understand the situation or not.

I haven't spent much time around dogs, but I've been around (neutered) cats a lot and it's pretty obvious that they do or do not give consent to being petted by specific people in much the same way that people do or don't consent to having sex with specific other people. Coyotes and wolves pair-bond. So I think it's pretty plausible that adult dogs might decide whether they want to have sex with a particular individual or not. (I do speculate it's unlikely that they'd pick a human over another dog, given a reasonable selection of other dogs...)

We don't generally give dogs the option of having partners, let alone choosing their partners themselves, so we don't see it, but I read a book by a woman who kept an unneutered female dog. The book was basically a biography of that dog and her family. There was one scene where a male dog, who had been "hanging around" with the female dog, saw her with their puppies for the first time. The author described the male dog as looking stunned... and then he did the responsible dog daddy thing and went over to the puppies and barfed in front of them, because if you're a wolf daddy or a jackal daddy that's the way you bring food home for your family. The author wrote that the human family had to move away from that city for career reasons, and that her dog was heartbroken over not seeing that male again and was sad for the rest of her life. So no, dogs aren't just automatons that detect other dogs in heat and fuck indiscriminantly.

I once worked for a couple of hours with factory-farmed chickens. Chickens aren't too bright, and I have no reason to think that they knew that the truck we were taking them to was going to take them to the soup factory, but it was obvious that even those chickens wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else. The thought of doing that to pigs, in particular, which are smart enough to know what's up, breaks my heart. I just don't get how you guys who are so opposed to bestiality because the alleged lack of consent of this hypothetical dog is such a big deal, while at the same time you don't care about the lack of consent of every food animal, ever.

In case it's not evident, I think that beastiality should be legal for the same reasons I think that homosexuality should be legal: I've never seen any evidence it, in general, harms the participants, and just because someone else is squicked out by it is no reason to oppress the participants. If I could ban something, I'd ban factory farming.

Posted by Old Crow]]>
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 06:47:16 -0800The Stranger
Posted by smajor82]]>
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 06:13:54 -0800The Stranger
As for Dan's advice, I stick by my point. Anything that's acceptable in private should eventually lead to a soceity where it is acceptable doing /acknowledging in public. If we can't envision a society where we can do that, there must be something wrong with the deed to start with, and we shouldn't be contribting to normalizing it in the first place. Trying to do both is a kind of hypocricy.
Especially, if the reason cited by pro-LGBT but anti-Zoophelia people, i.e. you can't build meaningful relationships with animals, turns out to be wrong, then, in a world where we accept it behind the fence but not in broad daylight becomes very wrong as well. Then we must all strive for a soceity where it does not alienate people, or create legal issues. I'm not sure that's someplace Dan would like to go, but he's in fact opening up that discussion. He should at least have the guts to admit what he's doing.

Instead of creating a world where increasing the use of animals for our pleasure, how about we change the current world to reach a place where the use of animals is minimal?
It's one thing to add some meat to your diet or befriending someone from another species etc, but the extent to which we have gone in regard to human's relationship to animals - the extreme meatification of diet, the breeding of animals solely for leather, the complete domestification to the extent of entirely conrolling their sex organs etc - it's wrong, requires inspection, and I'm sorry to say but seems very much a recent and western phenomena.
Instead of saying 'We eat/wear animals, therefore let's also be OK with fucking animals,' let's figure out ways to reduce/eliminating eating/wearing animals.

Posted by fahima]]>
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 01:58:34 -0800The Stranger
1. It is generally advisable that people avoid being seen doing things that will get them completely alienated from their friends, family and neighbors. This would clearly have that effect. It could also put him in legal trouble, depending on where he lives.
2. If you really aren't hurting anyone else and your silence imposes tremendous costs on your well-being, then you may want to try slowly exposing others to your activities. But in this case, he IS harming something else. Not all harm is created equal of course, and if you can tolerate harming animals in any of the other socially acceptable ways that Dan mentioned, then you don't have the moral authority to look down on the harm this guy is imposing; however, since his actions AREN'T victimless, his behavior is not going to be so easily explained away to the incredulous/disgusted.
Posted by Username]]>
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 00:04:27 -0800The Stranger
As you said, if I'm willing to eat animals that were killed for my eating pleasure, then I don't have a right to pass moral judgment on someone who wants to get fucked by an animal. Even someone who wants to fuck an animal, although that's significantly worse.
Posted by Username]]>
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 23:54:22 -0800The Stranger
If you think hiding it forever is the way to go, then it's something that's unadvisable.

It's either/or, Dan.
Posted by fahima]]>
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 23:40:19 -0800The Stranger
And, in contrast, the factory farming, animal testing, and painful surgery on domestic animals to make them more compatible to living with humans (removing claws, scent glands, reproductive organs...) seem like a much more reasonable target for those concerned about the welfare of animals.
Posted by shurenka]]>
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 22:52:22 -0800The Stranger
(I know we've discussed the barbs before, but jeebus, what about the barbs?!)
Posted by TVDinner]]>
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 19:45:17 -0800The Stranger
Posted by Spokalou]]>
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 19:33:50 -0800The Stranger
(Although I must admit, a lot of people are bizarrely prejudiced against furries, treating them like they're sick fucks or pathetic or something. I don't get that at all.)
Posted by Gamebird]]>
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 19:27:54 -0800The Stranger
I do feel bad for the poor bastard letter writer. What a thing to be afflicted with. He didn't apparently choose this, and can't help his attraction, I guess. What in hell is he to do? If therapy is hopeless, I mean? It's pretty fucking sad, that even if he does find a dog situation that works for him (a dog that wants to and does fuck him on a regular-enough basis), his chances of finding a human mate that he can be honest with about this, somebody to share his life with, seem slim. Or maybe not - there must be beastiality kink personals, right? But maybe not a lot of women in that community?

Posted by Velvetbabe]]>
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 18:46:35 -0800The Stranger
We routinely sterilize them against their will for fucksake. Or, if they're lucky, we breed them with a partner of our choosing then sell their children on the internet and pocket the money.

If we want to compare this to human sex both of those would be a much more substantial violation than this sick fuck letting a dog mount him.
Posted by giffy]]>
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 18:43:22 -0800The Stranger
Posted by qrq]]>
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 18:01:52 -0800The Stranger
Posted by MacCrocodile]]>
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 17:01:18 -0800The Stranger
Posted by Maverick Biceps]]>
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:59:51 -0800The Stranger
Posted by MacCrocodile]]>
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:59:03 -0800The Stranger
I'm not into animals in the least, but I still fail to see the 'torment' for a male animal particpating in penetrating a human (or a pillow), other than pure human philosophy. Nobody is forcing that pooch to hump the pillow, leg, hole or whatever- it CHOOSES to do said behavior for its own gratification. Don't see the problem here.
Posted by OutInBumF]]>
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:48:37 -0800The Stranger
Posted by Bauhaus I]]>
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:46:15 -0800The Stranger
But my problem with the application of informed consent to animals is... if animals can never give informed consent, is all animal sex then defined as rape? Not human-on-animal sex, but animal-on-animal sex. Are animal breeders rape enablers?

The idea of informed consent, it seems to me, is consent combined with the full knowledge of the consequences of sexual interaction. For humans, that includes pregnancy, social stigma, and a whole slew of emotional reactions that range from very positive to very, VERY negative, depending on the circumstance.

For a dog, or any animal, I don't see how the 'informed' part really applies. If it wants to hump something, it will, and sometimes that will result in puppies, and other times it won't. I don't know if there's the same risk of emotional trauma that a human could be subject to.

Disclaimer: I almost posted anonymously, because of my username. It's a funny picture, and that's all. I am neither a zoophile nor a dog owner. Carry on.
Posted by Hover Dog]]>
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:25:52 -0800The Stranger
Two women or two men attracted to each other used to be regarded as a mental illness - that's absolutely true. But both women and both men, if they were of the age of consent, agreed to that relationship and further, sought it out.

The argument that homosexuals used to be considered sick just like people into animals (but someday who knows) doesn't work because consent is missing. Most think incest is pretty fucking sick too, but it can be consensual. Bestiality can't every be. The basset hound doesn't know what's going on - like perhaps a severely mentally disabled person. That would be the better analogy.
Posted by Bauhaus I]]>
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:07:03 -0800The Stranger